helllooooo world! i realize i haven't updated my blog in about three months. oops!!! i feel like i should make up for lost time with a few updates about my travels and whatnot. at the moment i'm in nice, france at a great hostel called Villa Saint-Exupery.

i spent the first half of my break from school in barcelona. all of my classmates either left to go home or to travel, so it was a little sad to see everyone go after having spent a semester together. i'm glad i'm staying for the year because i feel like i've only just gotten started, especially with learning the language and figuring out how to best take advantage of living in barcelona. my new classmates and roommates will be arriving in just a few days!

the bcea farewell dinner

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i spent Christmas and New Year with deb & larry. (they're a couple who is on staff with campus crusade, and i know them from NYC. they're kind of like surrogate parents to me in barcelona.) their son who's my age, preston, came for the holidays, so that was really fun because we know each other from before and he's as goofy as me. they also had friends visit from the States during New Year's (11-year-old andrew in the picture below is the son). january 6th was Three Kings Day, which is like the big deal holiday in spain, so i stayed until then to watch the parade and see what the festivities would be like.

andrew and preston playing on the playground

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after that, i headed out to italy to visit alissa (my first-year roommate from sarah lawrence) who is studying in florence.

ponte vecchio, firenze

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alissa and me at the top of the duomo of the cathedral

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i also met up with my friend josh (a classmate from barcelona this past semester) and his friends who were backpacking through europe. it was fun to hang out with them all, and we went to museums and all that florencey stuff. for my birthday we went to venice, and they treated me to a gondola ride, which was really nice.

ilan, maya, me, and josh on the gondola ride in venice (jackie is taking the picture)

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for some reason, there's a pieta with an american flag in venice...(josh and me as the pieta)

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josh, ilan, jackie, and maya

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after spending about 5 days in florence, i went off to paris to explore the city and practice my french! i had a great time by myself, walking around and doing whatever i felt like. i met up with a couple friends from sarah lawrence to have lunch, and other than that had no schedule to stick to. it was lovely. one day, maybe after i graduate, i might go back there to work on my french.

i happened to walk by the moulin rouge while i was exploring montmartre.


crepe stand near the eiffel tower


now i'm here in nice, and i'm going to return to barcelona tomorrow. i met up with my friend nosheen here (i met her at the hostel in aix-en-provence earlier this year), so that was cool.

nosheen and me in our hostel


the weather is so nice here, and the sea is beautiful.


yesterday i went to monaco with some friends i met in the hostel. what a strange place...i don't think i would ever want to live there because all there is there are cars and money.

extra fancy spilt milk and a 5-euro cafe au lait


there are tons of aussies here in my hostel, so i'm perfecting my australian dialect. oh how i love accents! i've gotten to speak chinese, french, spanish, (pretend) italian, and all kinds of english during my trip. and i've met some fun people along the way.

the lone american in a sea of aussies (at eze village, a medieval town between nice and monaco)


anyway, my plans for today and the next couple days are to just have a lot of time alone reading and writing and quieting my heart before the craziness of the new semester comes. i have loved being able to use my french, but i have to get back into spanish mode again!

to see more pictures:
www.dropshots.com/thescarlettruth
www.dropshots.com/brokencitylights
paris: http://slc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2008043&l=bcc93&id=28600003
nice & monaco: http://slc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2008044&l=2bf0f&id=28600003

i went to dublin a month and a half ago and i loved it! i'll have to do a make-up post for that trip too...

last weekend i went to aix-en-provence, france where my friend john is studying. it sucked at first because i was sick for the first 3 days, but i still enjoyed being there. it´s a nice town, and i got to use my french!!

one of my favorite things was meeting people in the hostel where i stayed. i met a girl from england and a boy from sweden who came to study french. i also met a girl from taiwan who is travelling on her own after studying in england for a year. ¡qué bueno! i got to practice my french and chinese (and english, haha) all in one trip.

one day we went to cassis, where there is a pebbly beach.

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john mimicking a really weird mannequin.

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nosheen, the girl i met from england, is from Nottingham (i.e. robin hood!). she told me about the town and how sherwood forest is there and the big tree and the castle and other old stuff from robin hood times, and i really want to go there. i also want to go to paris. i also want to go back to france after i graduate from college and become fluent in french...

i also want to do a lot of things.

this past weekend, i went on a cava trip with my program. cava is spanish champagne. we went to a big manufacturer (cordoniu) and a small private one where they do everything by hand. it was cool because we took tours and learned how cava is made.

anywho, it´s midterms week here (a concept i´m very unfamiliar with back at sarah lawrence), so that means i have to study!

smell ya later!

creo que necesito escribir en español porque es bueno a praticarlo. PERO yo sé que mi español está muy mal y la mayor de gentes no van a poder entender mi escritura horrible.

all that to say, i´m going to write in english now.

it´s been fun and funny attempting to communicate with people here in spanish. for the most part, the only times i´m forced to use it is when i go into a store or maybe in a taxi. i´m around a lot of americans all the time. on wednesday, my program will start our "intercambio de conversación," which is when they´ll bring in spanish college students to do language exchange. they can practice their english with us, and we can practice our spanish with them. i´m glad that they´re arranging this for us because it´s very easy to speak english all the time and never challenge ourselves in the language.

i´ve been thinking about/working on my photography, although i haven´t printed/enlarged anything yet. i´ve been shooting both in color as well as black & white, so it´s all seeming new and experimental and exciting because i´m playing with color film. the other night i was even taking pictures in my dream...i had all these particularly great shots, and when i realized i was dreaming i was disappointed that they weren´t real. whenever i´m able to make some products, i´ll see if i can scan some images and post them on here.

tomorrow night i´m participating in a photography workshop (critique-night type thing) at Obra Vista, the Ágape art studio/gallery/café. it will all be in spanish, so i´m sure i´ll have trouble keeping up. however, i think it will be good for me to get thrown in the mix. in case you don´t know, Ágape is the european division of Campus Crusade for Christ, and Obra Vista is an amazing space in Barcelona where artists gather to dialogue and share their art and hold events. it´s sort of like transFORM in nyc, but i think it´s also a community that´s more integrated with students and professional artists and staff members and people who support the arts. i don´t know a whole lot about it yet, though, so i may not have that completely right. anyway, i´m looking forward to being involved there throughout the year.

All my classes are very interesting. My art history class is a survey of spanish art, but so far we are moving through the medieval period which covers a lot of architecture and arts having to do with the Church. we went to a museum on friday that has many frescos from romanesque churches in catalunya that are displayed in their original positions-- they built apses and walls and arches and stuff in the museum so that we see the paintings as they were once created. what is most interesting (and also a bit disheartening) is coming to understand the cultural/political/social/religious context from which the art was created. i won´t go on about it in full detail here.

today we were given choices of what to write our final paper on for art history, and mine is going to be about Gaudí´s Sagrada Familia, which i´m really excited about! i can´t wait to learn more in-depth about it.

i think i´ll end this entry here, but i´ll probably be back with another update in a few days or so. thanks for reading!

i've been in barcelona for two weeks now, and i'm getting much more familiar with the city. this past weekend was the biggest festival of the year here-- la mercè. there were tons of events going on. my friend john came here to visit. he's studying in the south of france right now, so he took the train to come for the weekend.

thursday night:
we went to the beach at barceloneta.


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friday:
we went to the picasso museum.

(no, you are not allowed to take photographs in the museum.)

it was sunny and rainy at the same time, which seems to happen a lot here...



we hung out with cate and deb & larry in barceloneta. there were streets decorated in their neighborhood for block parties.

(lots of handmade kites)

(frilly pink stuff and flowers)

(there was a carnival going on in la barceloneta)


on sunday night, these streets were lit up and full of families and fun music. cate and i danced in the street with the grandmas and grandpas. i think it was the most "spanish" experience i've had yet.

saturday:
we went to la sagrada familia-- an amazing unfinished masterpiece by antoni gaudí. they are still working on it, and he's been dead for over 80 years. photographs don't do it justice at all, but these might give you an idea of what it looks like.

(part of the inside)

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(the front doors are made of words)

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we went to the correfoc. it is called the "fire run," but it's really a huge parade of dragons and devils and drumming and utter chaos!!! this would never happen in the states, because everyone would get sued! it was CRAZY, but a lot of fun.

(people dressed up as devils)


(john running into the middle of the street)



monday night was the end of la mercè 2006. it's a catalan holiday, so we had no classes and pretty much nothing was open. there was a big fireworks-water fountain-light-music show at montjuic. the theme was "history of jazz," which made the whole thing feel pretty american. (fireworks always remind me of the fourth of july anyway.) but it was a great show, and the fireworks were possibly better than the macy's fireworks in new york!

this whole weekend has been like a vacation, so it was a little strange to go back to classes today. however, i am enjoying my classes. i am looking forward to doing more with the ágape art studio and getting connected with people through that. i went to a meeting last week so, i got to see lisa and jonás and meet some other cool people.

it's been a great weekend! i hope to hear from y'all who are reading this, so please e-mail me or leave me a comment on here. if you don't have an account, you can choose "anonymous" and still leave a comment. ¡hasta luego!

¡hola!

i have arrived safely in barcelona, and we have gone through orientation during our first few days in the city.

landing in barcelona

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lauren (one of my apartment-mates) and me as we're about to land

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in 4Cats, the bar/café that is famous because Picasso used to go there

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the building in which i now reside

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i am blessed with having my own room!

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our kitchen

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lauren's room (she gets a double room to herself because one of our other girls couldn't come). her room and the other room have beautiful balcony windows!

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kassie and becca (my other apt-mates) weren't home when i took the pictures, so i don't have one of their room.

things are going well so far, we start our classes tomorrow. we took a placement test today for our spanish language classes...i think i'm probably going to be in the beginner class! i'm excited for my classes to start so i can learn more! i'm also taking creative writing, photography, and survey of spanish art.

i don't have internet in my apartment, so i will only be on from time to time. my skype username is "joanlie" if you would like to try to talk sometime. if you want to see more pictures, you can see my picture sites (www.dropshots.com/joanlie and www.dropshots.com/thescarlettruth). ¡hasta luego!